Features

I am writing in response to the recent letter to the editor in your newspaper (Daily Planet, May 4-6) entitled “Warsaw Ghetto” by Jane Stillwater. I would like to commend her on her particularly clear-sighted comparison between the situation of the Palestinians in Gaza and the state of the Jews in Warsaw prior to the Second World War. She is scathingly accurate in writing that the “independent” Gaza that Ariel Sharon would create would be “an exact re-creation of the spirit and mood of the ghetto at Warsaw—no more, no less,” and that “being an Arab these days is chillingly similar to being a Jew in 1939,” with “the only difference” that she can see being the source of the financing of such genocide.

Her insightful comparison sheds much-needed light on the frightening similarity between the two situations, which in my mind is much more apt and valid than the comparisons that are carelessly being tossed back and forth these days between Iraq and Vietnam. First and foremost, it is truly a wonder that the mainstream media has not devoted more attention to the secret camps and factories in the Negev where the Israelis have slowly but persistently been transporting trainloads of Palestinian families innocent of any crime to burn in ovens as part of a genocidal Israeli policy that is strikingly similar to the German “Final Solution.” This is probably the single greatest similarity between Warsaw and Gaza. From independent sources, I would estimate that over two million Palestinians have already been systematically disposed of in this manner, although you would not read it in any newspaper. (A particularly touching story is that of the teenager from Gaza who was strapped with explosives and sent to carry out a suicide bombing in Israel. If you look at the accounts of the incident in the mainstream Zionist media, you are led to believe that the life of this young teenager was spared by the Israelis through the removal of an explosive device that had been so skillfully placed around his body by his fellow Palestinians. What the news media does not tell you, however, is that once the news cameras had finished taking their last shots, the unfortunate young boy was immediately led out by the Israeli authorities to be incinerated in an Israeli oven that would have made the Nazis proud.) Although the number of murdered Palestinians may at this particular moment be considerably less than that of the Jews who were killed in a similar manner in Europe in the past, I would not personally be surprised if it were to reach six million in the next couple of years, especially if people like Ms. Stillwater do not take the humanitarian attitude that “no one spoke out to protect the Jews in 1939… but dag nab it, I’m not going to let that happen again.” As for the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, with few exceptions, they either met their deaths in the incinerators of German concentration camps or were murdered by German soldiers after the staging of a desperate uprising. Clearly, I think there are few people who could seriously deny that without a concerted effort, it can only be a matter of years—or perhaps even months—before the entire population of Gaza is similarly decimated by the Israelis.

Expanding further upon the comparison between the Jews in Warsaw and the Palestinians in Gaza, a second major similarity can be seen in the reasons why the Jews were initially placed in a closed-up ghetto behind “watch towers, machine guns, and barbed wire” in the first place. If you are familiar with the history of Germany prior to World War II, you will remember that the Jews were actively devoted to the creation of an exclusively “Jewish” state in Germany, in which all Germans would be “driven into the sea.” An examination of textbooks taught in Jewish schools in Germany in the early 20th century reveals maps of Europe in which the entire territory of Germany is labeled as “Greater Israel.” Whereas the Germans grudgingly tolerated the Jews’ right to freedom of expression, they were understandingly infuriated by the fact that in pursuit of Zionist aspirations, the Jews continually blew up innocent women and children in German malls, cafes, discotheques, and buses. However, despite their well-grounded concerns for security, this of course in no way justifies the over-reaction by the German government, which evilly forced Jews into ghettoes and herded them off for mass slaughter by the millions.

In conclusion, I wholeheartedly agree with Ms. Stillwater that the comparison between Gaza and Warsaw is “just too ripe” to resist. I could not imagine why anyone might possibly think that such a level-headed comparison could reflect anti-Semitism on the part of its author.

Peter Koret is a Berkeley resident. This article is intended as satire and is not to be taken literally.